Humans may engage in human-to-computer dialogs with interactive software applications referred to herein as “automated assistants” (also referred to as “chatbots,” “interactive personal assistants,” “intelligent personal assistants,” “conversational agents,” etc.). For example, humans (which when they interact with automated assistants may be referred to as “users”) may provide commands and/or requests using spoken natural language input (i.e. utterances) which may in some cases be converted into text and then processed, and/or by providing textual (e.g., typed) natural language input. Automated assistants are typically reactive, as opposed to proactive. For example, at the onset of a human-to-computer dialog session between a user and an automated assistant (e.g., when there is no currently-applicable conversational context), the automated assistant may provide at most a generic greeting, such as “Hi,” “Good morning,” etc. The automated assistant does not proactively obtain and provide specific information of potential interest to the user. Consequently, the user must provide initial natural language input (e.g., spoken or typed) before the automated assistant will respond with substantive information and/or initiate one or more tasks on behalf of the user.